“How is she?” Cillian asked when Bran slipped into his borrowed bedroom.
Bran closed the door behind him with a quiet click, leaning against it with a sigh. “Sleeping now. Jupiter is watching over her, and I set witchmarks on the door and windows. I’ll know if anyone tries to get in while we talk.”
Cillian nodded, taking a seat on the cushioned bench at the foot of the bed. “I think we’re overdue for that.”
He’d tried in that cabin in the woods, both of them distracted by the monsters attempting to claw their way inside. Then there’d been no time while they suffered as Ainmire’s prisoners, their every move watched over by the Fae. Privacy had been a laughable dream, but they had it here in this castle. Bran had done something with his magic to make sure the room was free of any spells the Fae might have put in it, his witchmarks hidden in the corners now. That small act of protection had left Cillian feeling safe, and he knew he’d sleep better whenever he did crawl into the huge bed Verlin had given him.
All three of them had taken time to wash up, getting rid of the rotten scent of the wyrding. The servants had left out an elaborate set ofclothes for Cillian that he’d tossed to the floor in favor of a pair of plain brown pants and a linen shirt he’d convinced them to find for him.
Bran fiddled with the end of the leash, the metal glinting in the light from the wall sconces. The same glass spheres from Ainmire’s estate were used in this one. Cillian had relied on Bran to get the fire elementals to burn when they’d entered the room, still having no idea how to use his magic.
“Are you mad that I’m Fae?” Cillian asked, gesturing at his face. The dresser had a mirror over it, and he’d tried not to look into its reflective glass, still finding a stranger staring back at him.
Bran slowly shook his head. “Your heart is still human. You’d hate me if it weren’t.”
“But you should hate me, right? Isn’t that what you and everyone have been saying? That witches and Fae are at war with each other?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You left.”
Bran let the leash go so he could cross his arms over his chest, glaring at Cillian in a way that was so familiar, even after years of absence. “You pushed me away.”
Cillian slowly got to his feet again. “And I told you I didn’t mean to.”
There weren’t any monsters clawing at the door and walls of the bedroom, fighting to get in—just the two of them and a past that had haunted them both for years.
Bran had been a ghost in Cillian’s memories, haunting him since graduation, lingering in the empty spaces of his life. Bran was both regret and want to the foundations of the man Cillian had become before he knew he was Fae underneath the skin he’d lived in for almost twenty-six years. But Bran hadn’t walked away after that reveal, so here they stood, in some impossible land, told to be enemies by habit and culture, and both of them only reaching for each other.
“You were my first kiss,” Cillian confessed. “And you literally burned me.”
Like iron, he didn’t say, but Bran’s flinch told him the other man made the connection anyway. “Maybe your glamour reacted to me because I was a witch?”
“I don’t know. I remember it hurt, and I wasn’t expecting it. So I pushed you away, but I never meant for you toleave.” He couldn’t keep the ache out of his voice, expression twisting as he tried to suppress the hurt. “I dated other people, you know? But none of them were you.”
“We never dated.”
“They weren’t you,” Cillian repeated, staring at Bran. “I never wanted them to be. I only wanted you. Iwantyou.”
Bran closed his eyes, tilting his head back. “I didn’t think you did back then. Pelham is a small town, and I couldn’t stand the thought of living there if you hated me.”
Cillian took a step forward. “I could never hate you.”
Bran opened his eyes, meeting Cillian’s gaze with a wealth of emotion writ plain across his face. “Everyone here wants you to.”
“Fuck them. If I’m their prince, then they can’t tell me what to do.”
“You realize that if I didn’t know you, I’d want to kill you?”
“The same way you’d kill your sister?”
Bran took a half step back at that, hunching his shoulders as if Cillian had punched him. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it? Everyone here thinks she’s a Fae, too.”
“She’s my sister.”
“Exactly. And I’m your best friend. It doesn’t matter that we’re Fae.”
